Poker Nights
by Lee Whimsy
Summary: When Jedediah let Octavius win at the card tables, he was really saying "I love you".  And for two years, neither of them knew it.  Slash.


Title: Poker Nights (this is not a love story)  
Author: Lee Whimsy  
Warnings: Violence, sex, and foul language, all very vague because apparently I can't write actual stories anymore. Also, slash. Is that even a warning in this fandom?  
Rating: T  
Disclaimer: Not mine. Promise.  
A/N: A (belated) birthday gift for hoc_voluerunt, who deserves much better fic than I am capable of writing. I hope I did at least partial justice to your original prompt, bb!

* * *

They lived in a world of monsters—monsters and adventures and all the romance of ten thousand years of history—but theirs was not a love story.

Instead, it was the smell of leather, blond hair turned golden under the artificial glow that could never be sunlight; it was calloused fingers fumbling over armor and tracing patterns on fading bruises, a litany too plain for words. It was gunpowder and knock-down-drag-out fights—it was whisky and sex and nights spent sitting side-by-side on the hood of an anachronistic car, watching the moonlight play out across the night sky.

(Theirs was not a love story. Instead, it went something like this.)

o0o

One particularly dull Wednesday night, Jedediah dragged Octavius to the fanciest saloon in town ("the _only_ saloon in town," Octavius pointed out, but Jedediah punched him in the shoulder and told him not get uppity) and they sat at the bar and drank their way through a bottle of whisky, trading dirty jokes and spinning lies into all their best war stories.

Then, sometime around midnight, Jed tried to teach Octavius to play poker: rambled about the rules and the tricks and the easiest ways to cheat while he shuffled and dealt. He was as good with cards as he was with his guns (and he _was_, he insisted, he was the best damn shot on the frontier) but Octavius was a natural, and _Romans_ didn't cheat.

That was a lie. Three hands and five dollars later, Jedediah called him on it. And within ten minutes, the night's easy camaraderie had degraded into an enthusiastically violent bar fight, punctuated with angry shouting and several broken chairs.

"Get out before I throw you out, idiots," said the barkeeper, brandishing a scowl and a shotgun, and confiscated both their weapons and their whiskey when they took it into their heads to argue.

They tumbled out the door and into the street. Battered, laughing, and too drunk to walk in a straight line, Octavius cast around for a convenient weapon, before—struck with sudden inspiration—he dunked the cowboy's head in a nearby horse trough. Dripping and spluttering, Jedediah kicked Octavius in the shins and stole his helmet, spitting out mouthfuls of dirty water in between curses. They both swore never to speak to the other again.

Wednesday nights were poker nights, after that.

o0o

When Octavius first kissed Jedediah, it was brief and absentminded, a brush of chapped lips against the other man's cheek. Their car, idling just in front of the Roman exhibit, was an island of quiet amid the predawn chaos, and even Larry's booming voice over the PA system ("_five minutes 'till the sun's up, guys!") _was strangely distant.

"Until tomorrow, then," Octavius said—not really a question, because it hadn't been a question for months—and leaned over the gearshift to kiss him, the kind of automatic affection that fifty years in the museum's cultural soup hadn't yet repressed.

A brief pause followed, and Octavius opened the passenger door, mind already returning to the training rosters that he'd been contemplating for most of the night. Distracted and thoroughly comfortable in the cowboy's presence, he didn't react to the sudden movement behind him until it was too late.

Jedediah punched him so hard that he was knocked back onto the marble floor, stars exploding into blackness behind his eyes.

By the time Octavius staggered back onto his feet, one hand clapped to his face, Jedediah was gone, the car speeding across the expanse between their two dioramas in an ear-splitting screech of tires. As blood dripped through Octavius' fingers and splattered onto the white marble below him—_wonderful, _he thought, _a broken nose_—he trudged back towards Rome.

_("One minute and counting, people!")_

o0o

When Octavius dropped by for poker night that Wednesday, Jedediah was nowhere to be seen.

Rebecca called it "culture shock", but the way that the cowboy was avoiding him—and the things that he said whenever they _did _cross paths—felt less like miscommunication and more like a sharp blow to the chest.

_More like loss_, Octavius thought, and tried to ignore the obvious conclusion by shouting himself hoarse at the first unfortunate soldier to walk by.

o0o

Things changed again when Larry left.

They never talked about it—about anything that mattered, really—but for his part Jedediah stopped hurling insults at Octavius, suggestions that were only shameful because of the ugly way he said them, and Octavius stopped muttering rude phrases in Latin whenever Jedediah passed by.

(Neither of them ever said _"I'm sorry"_. Instead, Jedediah let Octavius win at poker occasionally, and Octavius was painstakingly careful to never so much as brush against Jedediah as they walked, penance and apology and trepidation wrapped into one.)

It hurt more than it should have, but Octavius was getting better at pretending: pretending that he didn't mind never being able to touch his best friend, pretending that the aforementioned best friend wasn't the man he was falling in love with, pretending that it didn't matter that Jedediah would probably kill him if he so much as held his hand.

They got into a lot of fights in those days, with each other and with their men and with the world around them. They were good at things like that.

o0o

Late one rainy night when nothing in particular was happening—sprawled silent on the hood of the car in an abandoned exhibit—Jedediah leaned across the inches of space that separated them and pulled Octavius into an awkward, one-armed hug.

Octavius, for one brief, delirious moment, wondered if he was dreaming.

"You're m'best friend," Jedediah muttered, his breath warm against the pale skin of Octavius' throat. "M'best friend in the whole damn world. You know that, right?"

"I—of course," Octavius said, trying very hard to ignore the way it felt to have the blond cowboy pressed so close against him. "Of course, Jedediah."

A sudden crack of thunder made the both jump, and Jedediah pulled back as if he'd been burned, a blush tingeing his face pink. "Good," he said, clearing his throat. "I just—yeah. Hell of a storm tonight, innit?"

"It—it certainly is," Octavius managed, the words thick in his throat.

He wanted to laugh, to cry, to take Jedediah back into his arms and kiss him senseless, to put his years of rhetoric training to good use and tell the cowboy exactly what he meant to him. Instead, he leaned back against the windshield and listened to Jedediah's slow, even breathing, a steady counterpoint to the rain that pounded in irregular torrents against the distant roof.

It was enough.

o0o

Sand was everywhere—on the floor and in the creases of Jedediah's worn old clothes and ground into his golden hair, but neither of them noticed. The whole world was laughing, triumphant, and Jedediah was laughing too, wrapping his arms around Octavius and holding him so tight that Octavius thought his ribs might crack.

They'd won the day. Didn't they always?

_I love you_, Octavius though, body thrumming with adrenaline and relief. _I love you I love you Iloveyou._

Jedediah pulled back seconds later, of course, because he was Jedediah: he could drink and fight and curse in full measure, but he couldn't let himself fall in love with his best friend.

(He could bed him, though. And that's exactly what he did—their first night back at the museum, and the second, and the third.

It took weeks to get the sand out of their clothes.)

o0o

They never said it aloud, and they didn't celebrate their anniversary because they didn't have one. Octavius didn't bring Jedediah flowers and Jedediah always forgot Octavius' birthday.

Instead, they got drunk and played poker together on Wednesdays; they fought and had sex and drove aimlessly around the museum until the sky was shot through with predawn color.

(This was their love story.)

* * *

I love reviews. So does Jedediah. They make him feel special.


End file.
